June 13, 2022 • 18 mins
Vaughn Dabney is the owner of the first Black-owned van conversion company, Unoma Haus.
He joins the podcast to discuss Unoma Haus mission to influence communities of color and others in need by providing alternative living options.
Guest IG: @itstanyatime
Guest IG: @mrdabney
Business IG: @unomahaus
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pay Money Movers. Welcome back to the Money Moves podcast,
the daily podcast determined to give you the keys to
the Kingdom of financial stability, wealth and abundant being. Our
next guest is the owner of Noma House, the first
(00:21):
black owned van conversion company based in Los Angeles, California.
He hopes to impact communities of color and others in
need by providing alternative living options. Money Movers, Please welcome
Von Dabney to the podcast. Hi Vaughan, Hi, thank you
for having me. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Super excited to have
you on Money Moves. I have to say, I am
(00:44):
really excited for this segment because something happened to me
over the pandemic and I would never have guessed I
would be into this tiny home, van life, vintage camper
conversion lifestyle. But I'm all in so really excited to
hear about what you have to say and how what
really attracted you to be starting, you know, my house.
Let's jump in, So let's start at the beginning. Tell
(01:07):
us a little bit about yourself and did you grow
up living in a van in a tiny house or
is this something you've sort of, like many of us,
been drawn to just because of you know, new exploring
new ways to live, the COVID pandemic. So I growing up,
I didn't have much. UM. I never felt like I
needed anything, but I didn't have much. One thing I
(01:29):
will say is that I saw my grandfather always living
in a camper or a van that he converted. This
is we're talking. You know, seventy years ago he was
living in this this vehicle and he's never had an apartment.
From to my knowledge, he has never had an apartment
or home. And UM, moving like fast forward to now.
I was a software developer for fourteen years, working for
(01:52):
ourselves UM full time for about eight years, and then
two thousand seventeen, I leave my apartment in downtown l A.
I traveled the country for about two months, eleven thousand
miles thirty nine states. It was incredible. I had just
finished writing, uh, writing my first book, and I wanted
to connect with people through that. It's about self, So
(02:12):
I wanted to connect with people. And when I got
back to l A, I didn't want to rent again.
I you know, seventh most expensive city in the world
to live in. I didn't want to rent. And my
brain started going, how can I create a home that
allows me the freedom to move whenever I want to,
and that led me to this delivery truck. Right I
(02:33):
live in I live in a tiny home truck that
is basically a tiny home inside of a FedEx type
of delivery truck. It's called a step band and I've
been in here for the past three years and I
love it. No rent, everything is solo powered, and that
kind of led me to start this company, will know
my house in and start building these vand conversions for
(02:53):
other people. Oh my gosh, this is such an incredible
story because I mean this was pre pandemic. You know,
you have this great up your gun to school. You're
a software engineer doing all sorts of things, and just
the call of the open road hit you and you
spent all this time traveling. What what came first? You know,
you built this van by hand, or you bought the
(03:14):
van and somebody else converted it. So I I am
an engineer by trade and I had to build this
by hand. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, all right. So now you've
built this van, when did you realize there actually might
be a business to this so that you could now
build build vans, build tiny homes on wheels for other people.
(03:36):
I would be remiss if I didn't say I've been
an entrepreneur since high school. I've always had that mindset
of how can I flip this, how can I create
a business out of this? So it was already in
the back of my mind. Anyway. It just took those
one or two people in my d M saying Hey,
are you going to do this for other people? And
I was like absolutely, I was just waiting for you
(03:57):
guys to come through. I was just waiting for product
market bit, and you just validated that. That's it, that's it. Wow, Okay,
so let's talk about the process of guys. I just
need to caveat this. So, like I said, during the pandemic,
you know, we were all um locked up inside and
I felt like I didn't have an office space. You know,
I shared an office space with my partner, and so
(04:17):
you know, you couldn't do two people on zoom because
one person would be talking, one person would have to whisper.
And somewhere along the line, just like you, I saw
a tiny camper. So I have a nineteen sixty seven
Aristocrat low liner. It probably looked like a crystal mac
lab and I had someone it really did. I don't
know what went down in that camper, but let me
just say the sixties were wild, y'all. So I had
(04:40):
it completely redone and glamorized and it now sits, you know,
on my property. It's my perfect little she shed office.
And I would like to say I could live in it,
but I just don't know where i'd put all my shoes.
It's the only thing. Um. But yeah, it happened similarly
to you. And it's such a beautiful space. I really
(05:01):
really love it. So now, how long does it take
to actually build out a camper? So it really depends
on what that person wants. So if we if we're
talking about they just want a weekender van, they just
want to take trips to the desert for a couple
of days. They might not need a shower, They might
not even need a stove or a sink, right, they
might just need a toilet, heater and some WiFi. Um,
(05:24):
those usually take around two and a half months, three months,
and then a full build like living shower, toilet, sink, stove,
the whole nine refrigerator, those usually take around like five
to six months. And we're talking small team right now,
so we're our goal is to actually get that down
to one to two months, regardless of the type of build. Okay,
(05:46):
so how do you source all the Okay, so let's
talk about the high end version of a camper. That's
get it out with everything, you can shower, you can cook. Um,
what's the price point on something like that? Price point
without the van is around seventy eight grand with a van,
you're talking any that plus fifty or sixty grand, so
maybe a hundred thirty even everything. So you're talking no rent?
(06:10):
Mm hm, no rent? Water bill? Water bill is negligible.
I mean you you fill it up whenever it runs out. Um,
I have a propane tank in my truck that powers
the stove and the heater. I fill that up or
I replaced that maybe every two to three weeks. So
I mean it's negligible. And and again all the power
(06:31):
is sourced from the sun. That's incredible. I love that
all right. So you had me at propane tank. Mine
does not have the capacity to cook in it. That
was a choice. So what are you cooking there? What?
What do I cook? Oh? I mean I love to cook.
I'm actually plant based kind of moving out of that though,
(06:52):
I mean you know, if I want to eat it,
I'll eat it. But I cook. I love to cook
breakfast in here. I cook pancakes, I cook spaghetti, I
cook tacos, I make jack fruit barbecue sandwiches. I mean,
you know, it's a stove. It's a two burner stove,
so I can cook whatever you can cook at home.
Am I taking me longer because I only have two burners.
Well that's fine, that's fine as long as the food
(07:13):
gets to the table. Let's talk about this, you know,
van life community that seems to have grown, and I
don't know, i'd like your thoughts on this, Vaughan. Has
it grown or has it always been a strong following
that's been you know, living in tiny homes, tiny homes
on wheels, or has this been sort of like a
resurgence recently. So that's a great question. I think we
(07:38):
first look at, um what the pandemic did for people's priorities,
And what I saw was the top priorities where I
want to see my family and friends and loved ones,
and I want to travel, and I want to do
those things safely, and so people migrated to vehicle travel
to do that, to see their loved ones and to travels,
see the countries that they're in. And so looking back
(08:01):
at van life, given my example with my grandfather, it's
nothing new. People have been doing this for years now.
When you segment that out into which communities are doing this,
there has been a movement. I would say it's probably longer.
I know some people are gonna ranking me for this,
but I would say, let's say five six years, maybe
seven years that people of color, black and brown people
(08:25):
I've started to get into this movement. We all know
that we we love to travel, we love the outdoors.
We you know, and it doesn't have to be camping
for us to love the outdoors. But the movement in
terms of representation online and in media, that's what's new.
That's what's changing. And we're seeing more black and brown
people doing this and and sitting in their vans and
(08:47):
adding to the hashtags. Right, that's where the representation matters,
because you need to see someone that looks like you,
are similar to you in order for you to have
the confidence to do it. Yeah. No, I love that,
and you know it's certainly something that I think that
I'll just speak for myself. A lot of people were like,
what I don't understand, but when they see it, when
(09:10):
I take people in my van, you know, and I'm
really excited for you in our next segment to sort
of show us around the van, they're they're immediately like,
I love this, I want one. I you know, this
makes sense. This resonates so that idea of representation, it's
so important. And I think that what I love about
it especially is surprising representation because even you sort of
said it yourself, people of color like, oh wait, we
(09:32):
didn't think that was cool until we saw you do it,
and that you know, it goes across so many different industries, markets,
and like that's why it's so important to share these
just unique stories because it's it resonates with so many people. Absolutely,
it's it's it's just important. And I think back even
to the generation that's coming after me, right after us,
the the children who they saw my segment on the
(09:56):
Today's Show, and now they see a delivery truck go
by and their mind goes, oh, that could be a home,
or that could be that could be a livabool space,
that could be a barbershop, right, it could be anything
other than a delivery truck. And that is my goal. Yeah,
and you know, I think you look at there's so
much the diversity of experience and interest in like black
(10:17):
and brown communities, but oftentimes we're pigeonholed into these ideas
of like, Okay, you only like one thing or you know.
So the more and more we share and experience it,
I think the more people, the more creative outlets come
out of this. So let's go back to creating this business.
You know you've been on the Today Show. People are
d m ng you. They're saying, hey, I want one
of those um how many? How many? Um? And what's
(10:40):
the specific name that you call it? Do we call
it van life? Do we call it? We can? We
call it van conversions? How many van conversions have you done?
So we are on vans five and six right now? Okay,
I love it? Okay, Vans five and six. And are
most of your customers and clients in California? Are they
all over the country right now? Let me see, we
(11:00):
have one customer in Miami, one customer in New York, UM,
three customers in California, and then I count my van
as the first official Yes, so three three in California too,
on the East coast okay, all right, so let's talk
about sourcing product here. Where do you actually find these vans?
(11:26):
So there actually have been waves of shortages and people
are waiting eight months, nine months just to get a
van sometimes. So what I did early on was just
reach out to different dealers and say, hey, this is
what we're doing. We'll have customers coming in. They want fans.
Can you just let me know when you get fans in.
(11:47):
And so by the time we got our customers in,
we started to do that legwork. Hey, do you have
any vans? We got a customer, No, but I can
call this one over here and see if they have
some vans. And then other times the customer already has
a van and they're like, we we want you to
convert this for us, and so we have it shipped
to us. We take good care of it, we haven't
locked down, and we work on it here at the workshop. Wow. Okay,
(12:09):
so tell me, I'm really intrigued by the name behind you,
Noma House. Where did that come from? I wanted something
to really represent the work that I was going to
embark on, and I have West African roots, I have
German roots, and so I kind of went on this
(12:29):
exploration of what do I want people to think and
feel when they see, you know, my house, And I
want them to feel comfort, I want them to feel
good energy, I want them to feel love, right, and
and what came to mind was, okay, beautiful home. So
let me go to let me go to Igbo, which
is a language derived in Nigeria, one of the hundreds
(12:52):
of languages, and I found Unoma and Unoma means beautiful home.
And then the house is spelled in the German way,
so kind of a oh to that background, and so
you can expect high quality, beautiful spaces from us, beautiful
because we we I feel like we kind of take
design and great engineering with some of the German cars
(13:15):
and some of the German products that we buy. So
it was just kind of an ode to to that,
like merging the two. So when people see our name,
like they know what to expect. Yeah, and I love that.
It's like a shout out to you know, both sides
of your roots. So this homage to like your Nigeria
German roots, and it's like a perfect combination. It actually
has like it sounds beautiful, like really nice literation there.
(13:38):
But thank you, um, all right, So as we move forward,
you're now in the house. Um, where do you park
these bands? So let's say I buy one and I'm
gonna say this is gonna be my primary residence. How
do you find places to park your new home? Sure,
it's it's really tapping into the community. Um, mostly online
in Instagram. There's some RV forums and Reddit forms, but
(14:01):
it's really tapping into the community and talking to people.
But no one is really going to give up their
parking spaces. They're not gonna tell you where they parked,
just for safety reasons. So you kind of have to
be a little adventurous and wherever you're at, just travel
around and you you can kind of see where vans
park sometimes so you can see quiet industrial areas. The
(14:22):
goal is to not be conspicuous. You want to be
as inconspicuous as possible. You want to be quiet. You
want to respect the neighborhood that you're in. The biggest
no no is parking in neighborhoods. You don't park in
neighborhoods because somebody's going to call the police because they
don't recognize your vehicle. So there's that. But one of
our missions is to build micro communities and small cities
(14:46):
that people when they're traveling can park it safely, especially
the solo female traveler who is in their van or
they have a child and they're in their van. The
biggest thing for them is where do they park? Where
do they park that's safe, that they don't feel threatened
by anything or anyone. So that's one of our goals
in our missions. All right, So my last question, what
(15:08):
are some of the visions for Unoma House. Like when
you close your eyes and you think of, you know,
your greatest accomplishment or the greatest um house that you've built,
what are some of the fun things that are in it?
Or where do you see the company going? I don't know,
I've kind of got both questions on my mind. Yeah,
that excellent question. Unoma House is poised to be fifty
(15:32):
million dollar company. Right, it's not just vans. This is
our first product offering. But this year we intend to
get our first container and start building container homes. And
we we intend to acquire land or partner with people
who have land to provide these safe spaces, to part
to provide these small communities that have urban gardens and
regenerative sources of food and water. And this is not
(15:55):
just in the US, this is global, this is everywhere.
And furthermore, like the over watching theme is is kind
of community and betterment of us. And so how can
we develop products that help clean the air. How can
we develop products that we circulate the same water used
in the shower, now you can drink it five minutes later.
(16:16):
It's it's there's just a bigger vision of betterment of
our lives and this is the first entry point. Wow,
well this is super excited. I love everything that you're
building at you know, my house. I love the communities
that you have envisioned that will be built around this,
and I think this is really such a beautiful future
for so many of us. So thank you for you know,
(16:37):
planting the first seed and wishing you all the best.
And I know you'll be back with us again in
our in our upcoming episodes to do a deep dive
on how you are building out this company. But before
you leave, can you share with us and our money
Moves audience where they can find you on social media? Yes,
the best place is to follow me on Instagram. My
personal handle is at Mr Dabney m R D A
(17:00):
B N E Y and then you can follow Unomah
House at un Nomah House. All right, there you have it,
Money Movers. That's all the time we have for today.
But make sure to follow Von on his social media
handles and so that you can check out what's happening
as he builds out Unmah House. And if we have
helped you make your money move, please make sure to
(17:21):
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(17:43):
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you get your podcasts from
Pay Money Movers. Welcome back to the Money Moves podcast,
the daily podcast determined to give you the keys to
the Kingdom of financial stability, wealth and abundant being. Our
next guest is the owner of Noma House, the first
(00:21):
black owned van conversion company based in Los Angeles, California.
He hopes to impact communities of color and others in
need by providing alternative living options. Money Movers, Please welcome
Von Dabney to the podcast. Hi Vaughan, Hi, thank you
for having me. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Super excited to have
you on Money Moves. I have to say, I am
(00:44):
really excited for this segment because something happened to me
over the pandemic and I would never have guessed I
would be into this tiny home, van life, vintage camper
conversion lifestyle. But I'm all in so really excited to
hear about what you have to say and how what
really attracted you to be starting, you know, my house.
Let's jump in, So let's start at the beginning. Tell
(01:07):
us a little bit about yourself and did you grow
up living in a van in a tiny house or
is this something you've sort of, like many of us,
been drawn to just because of you know, new exploring
new ways to live, the COVID pandemic. So I growing up,
I didn't have much. UM. I never felt like I
needed anything, but I didn't have much. One thing I
(01:29):
will say is that I saw my grandfather always living
in a camper or a van that he converted. This
is we're talking. You know, seventy years ago he was
living in this this vehicle and he's never had an apartment.
From to my knowledge, he has never had an apartment
or home. And UM, moving like fast forward to now.
I was a software developer for fourteen years, working for
(01:52):
ourselves UM full time for about eight years, and then
two thousand seventeen, I leave my apartment in downtown l A.
I traveled the country for about two months, eleven thousand
miles thirty nine states. It was incredible. I had just
finished writing, uh, writing my first book, and I wanted
to connect with people through that. It's about self, So
(02:12):
I wanted to connect with people. And when I got
back to l A, I didn't want to rent again.
I you know, seventh most expensive city in the world
to live in. I didn't want to rent. And my
brain started going, how can I create a home that
allows me the freedom to move whenever I want to,
and that led me to this delivery truck. Right I
(02:33):
live in I live in a tiny home truck that
is basically a tiny home inside of a FedEx type
of delivery truck. It's called a step band and I've
been in here for the past three years and I
love it. No rent, everything is solo powered, and that
kind of led me to start this company, will know
my house in and start building these vand conversions for
(02:53):
other people. Oh my gosh, this is such an incredible
story because I mean this was pre pandemic. You know,
you have this great up your gun to school. You're
a software engineer doing all sorts of things, and just
the call of the open road hit you and you
spent all this time traveling. What what came first? You know,
you built this van by hand, or you bought the
(03:14):
van and somebody else converted it. So I I am
an engineer by trade and I had to build this
by hand. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, all right. So now you've
built this van, when did you realize there actually might
be a business to this so that you could now
build build vans, build tiny homes on wheels for other people.
(03:36):
I would be remiss if I didn't say I've been
an entrepreneur since high school. I've always had that mindset
of how can I flip this, how can I create
a business out of this? So it was already in
the back of my mind. Anyway. It just took those
one or two people in my d M saying Hey,
are you going to do this for other people? And
I was like absolutely, I was just waiting for you
(03:57):
guys to come through. I was just waiting for product
market bit, and you just validated that. That's it, that's it. Wow, Okay,
so let's talk about the process of guys. I just
need to caveat this. So, like I said, during the pandemic,
you know, we were all um locked up inside and
I felt like I didn't have an office space. You know,
I shared an office space with my partner, and so
(04:17):
you know, you couldn't do two people on zoom because
one person would be talking, one person would have to whisper.
And somewhere along the line, just like you, I saw
a tiny camper. So I have a nineteen sixty seven
Aristocrat low liner. It probably looked like a crystal mac
lab and I had someone it really did. I don't
know what went down in that camper, but let me
just say the sixties were wild, y'all. So I had
(04:40):
it completely redone and glamorized and it now sits, you know,
on my property. It's my perfect little she shed office.
And I would like to say I could live in it,
but I just don't know where i'd put all my shoes.
It's the only thing. Um. But yeah, it happened similarly
to you. And it's such a beautiful space. I really
(05:01):
really love it. So now, how long does it take
to actually build out a camper? So it really depends
on what that person wants. So if we if we're
talking about they just want a weekender van, they just
want to take trips to the desert for a couple
of days. They might not need a shower, They might
not even need a stove or a sink, right, they
might just need a toilet, heater and some WiFi. Um,
(05:24):
those usually take around two and a half months, three months,
and then a full build like living shower, toilet, sink, stove,
the whole nine refrigerator, those usually take around like five
to six months. And we're talking small team right now,
so we're our goal is to actually get that down
to one to two months, regardless of the type of build. Okay,
(05:46):
so how do you source all the Okay, so let's
talk about the high end version of a camper. That's
get it out with everything, you can shower, you can cook. Um,
what's the price point on something like that? Price point
without the van is around seventy eight grand with a van,
you're talking any that plus fifty or sixty grand, so
maybe a hundred thirty even everything. So you're talking no rent?
(06:10):
Mm hm, no rent? Water bill? Water bill is negligible.
I mean you you fill it up whenever it runs out. Um,
I have a propane tank in my truck that powers
the stove and the heater. I fill that up or
I replaced that maybe every two to three weeks. So
I mean it's negligible. And and again all the power
(06:31):
is sourced from the sun. That's incredible. I love that
all right. So you had me at propane tank. Mine
does not have the capacity to cook in it. That
was a choice. So what are you cooking there? What?
What do I cook? Oh? I mean I love to cook.
I'm actually plant based kind of moving out of that though,
(06:52):
I mean you know, if I want to eat it,
I'll eat it. But I cook. I love to cook
breakfast in here. I cook pancakes, I cook spaghetti, I
cook tacos, I make jack fruit barbecue sandwiches. I mean,
you know, it's a stove. It's a two burner stove,
so I can cook whatever you can cook at home.
Am I taking me longer because I only have two burners.
Well that's fine, that's fine as long as the food
(07:13):
gets to the table. Let's talk about this, you know,
van life community that seems to have grown, and I
don't know, i'd like your thoughts on this, Vaughan. Has
it grown or has it always been a strong following
that's been you know, living in tiny homes, tiny homes
on wheels, or has this been sort of like a
resurgence recently. So that's a great question. I think we
(07:38):
first look at, um what the pandemic did for people's priorities,
And what I saw was the top priorities where I
want to see my family and friends and loved ones,
and I want to travel, and I want to do
those things safely, and so people migrated to vehicle travel
to do that, to see their loved ones and to travels,
see the countries that they're in. And so looking back
(08:01):
at van life, given my example with my grandfather, it's
nothing new. People have been doing this for years now.
When you segment that out into which communities are doing this,
there has been a movement. I would say it's probably longer.
I know some people are gonna ranking me for this,
but I would say, let's say five six years, maybe
seven years that people of color, black and brown people
(08:25):
I've started to get into this movement. We all know
that we we love to travel, we love the outdoors.
We you know, and it doesn't have to be camping
for us to love the outdoors. But the movement in
terms of representation online and in media, that's what's new.
That's what's changing. And we're seeing more black and brown
people doing this and and sitting in their vans and
(08:47):
adding to the hashtags. Right, that's where the representation matters,
because you need to see someone that looks like you,
are similar to you in order for you to have
the confidence to do it. Yeah. No, I love that,
and you know it's certainly something that I think that
I'll just speak for myself. A lot of people were like,
what I don't understand, but when they see it, when
(09:10):
I take people in my van, you know, and I'm
really excited for you in our next segment to sort
of show us around the van, they're they're immediately like,
I love this, I want one. I you know, this
makes sense. This resonates so that idea of representation, it's
so important. And I think that what I love about
it especially is surprising representation because even you sort of
said it yourself, people of color like, oh wait, we
(09:32):
didn't think that was cool until we saw you do it,
and that you know, it goes across so many different industries, markets,
and like that's why it's so important to share these
just unique stories because it's it resonates with so many people. Absolutely,
it's it's it's just important. And I think back even
to the generation that's coming after me, right after us,
the the children who they saw my segment on the
(09:56):
Today's Show, and now they see a delivery truck go
by and their mind goes, oh, that could be a home,
or that could be that could be a livabool space,
that could be a barbershop, right, it could be anything
other than a delivery truck. And that is my goal. Yeah,
and you know, I think you look at there's so
much the diversity of experience and interest in like black
(10:17):
and brown communities, but oftentimes we're pigeonholed into these ideas
of like, Okay, you only like one thing or you know.
So the more and more we share and experience it,
I think the more people, the more creative outlets come
out of this. So let's go back to creating this business.
You know you've been on the Today Show. People are
d m ng you. They're saying, hey, I want one
of those um how many? How many? Um? And what's
(10:40):
the specific name that you call it? Do we call
it van life? Do we call it? We can? We
call it van conversions? How many van conversions have you done?
So we are on vans five and six right now? Okay,
I love it? Okay, Vans five and six. And are
most of your customers and clients in California? Are they
all over the country right now? Let me see, we
(11:00):
have one customer in Miami, one customer in New York, UM,
three customers in California, and then I count my van
as the first official Yes, so three three in California too,
on the East coast okay, all right, so let's talk
about sourcing product here. Where do you actually find these vans?
(11:26):
So there actually have been waves of shortages and people
are waiting eight months, nine months just to get a
van sometimes. So what I did early on was just
reach out to different dealers and say, hey, this is
what we're doing. We'll have customers coming in. They want fans.
Can you just let me know when you get fans in.
(11:47):
And so by the time we got our customers in,
we started to do that legwork. Hey, do you have
any vans? We got a customer, No, but I can
call this one over here and see if they have
some vans. And then other times the customer already has
a van and they're like, we we want you to
convert this for us, and so we have it shipped
to us. We take good care of it, we haven't
locked down, and we work on it here at the workshop. Wow. Okay,
(12:09):
so tell me, I'm really intrigued by the name behind you,
Noma House. Where did that come from? I wanted something
to really represent the work that I was going to
embark on, and I have West African roots, I have
German roots, and so I kind of went on this
(12:29):
exploration of what do I want people to think and
feel when they see, you know, my house, And I
want them to feel comfort, I want them to feel
good energy, I want them to feel love, right, and
and what came to mind was, okay, beautiful home. So
let me go to let me go to Igbo, which
is a language derived in Nigeria, one of the hundreds
(12:52):
of languages, and I found Unoma and Unoma means beautiful home.
And then the house is spelled in the German way,
so kind of a oh to that background, and so
you can expect high quality, beautiful spaces from us, beautiful
because we we I feel like we kind of take
design and great engineering with some of the German cars
(13:15):
and some of the German products that we buy. So
it was just kind of an ode to to that,
like merging the two. So when people see our name,
like they know what to expect. Yeah, and I love that.
It's like a shout out to you know, both sides
of your roots. So this homage to like your Nigeria
German roots, and it's like a perfect combination. It actually
has like it sounds beautiful, like really nice literation there.
(13:38):
But thank you, um, all right, So as we move forward,
you're now in the house. Um, where do you park
these bands? So let's say I buy one and I'm
gonna say this is gonna be my primary residence. How
do you find places to park your new home? Sure,
it's it's really tapping into the community. Um, mostly online
in Instagram. There's some RV forums and Reddit forms, but
(14:01):
it's really tapping into the community and talking to people.
But no one is really going to give up their
parking spaces. They're not gonna tell you where they parked,
just for safety reasons. So you kind of have to
be a little adventurous and wherever you're at, just travel
around and you you can kind of see where vans
park sometimes so you can see quiet industrial areas. The
(14:22):
goal is to not be conspicuous. You want to be
as inconspicuous as possible. You want to be quiet. You
want to respect the neighborhood that you're in. The biggest
no no is parking in neighborhoods. You don't park in
neighborhoods because somebody's going to call the police because they
don't recognize your vehicle. So there's that. But one of
our missions is to build micro communities and small cities
(14:46):
that people when they're traveling can park it safely, especially
the solo female traveler who is in their van or
they have a child and they're in their van. The
biggest thing for them is where do they park? Where
do they park that's safe, that they don't feel threatened
by anything or anyone. So that's one of our goals
in our missions. All right, So my last question, what
(15:08):
are some of the visions for Unoma House. Like when
you close your eyes and you think of, you know,
your greatest accomplishment or the greatest um house that you've built,
what are some of the fun things that are in it?
Or where do you see the company going? I don't know,
I've kind of got both questions on my mind. Yeah,
that excellent question. Unoma House is poised to be fifty
(15:32):
million dollar company. Right, it's not just vans. This is
our first product offering. But this year we intend to
get our first container and start building container homes. And
we we intend to acquire land or partner with people
who have land to provide these safe spaces, to part
to provide these small communities that have urban gardens and
regenerative sources of food and water. And this is not
(15:55):
just in the US, this is global, this is everywhere.
And furthermore, like the over watching theme is is kind
of community and betterment of us. And so how can
we develop products that help clean the air. How can
we develop products that we circulate the same water used
in the shower, now you can drink it five minutes later.
(16:16):
It's it's there's just a bigger vision of betterment of
our lives and this is the first entry point. Wow,
well this is super excited. I love everything that you're
building at you know, my house. I love the communities
that you have envisioned that will be built around this,
and I think this is really such a beautiful future
for so many of us. So thank you for you know,
(16:37):
planting the first seed and wishing you all the best.
And I know you'll be back with us again in
our in our upcoming episodes to do a deep dive
on how you are building out this company. But before
you leave, can you share with us and our money
Moves audience where they can find you on social media? Yes,
the best place is to follow me on Instagram. My
personal handle is at Mr Dabney m R D A
(17:00):
B N E Y and then you can follow Unomah
House at un Nomah House. All right, there you have it,
Money Movers. That's all the time we have for today.
But make sure to follow Von on his social media
handles and so that you can check out what's happening
as he builds out Unmah House. And if we have
helped you make your money move, please make sure to
(17:21):
let us know by sending us alike, sharing the knowledge
and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Make sure
to tune in Monday to Friday and subscribe to the
Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood, so that you two
can have the keys to financial freedom you so rightly deserve.
Thank you so much for tuning in Money Moves audience.
If you want more or a recap of this episode,
please go to the Bank Greenwood dot com and check
(17:43):
out the Money Moves podcast blog. Money Moves is an
I heart Radio podcast powered by Greenwood Executive produced by
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